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These past few weeks have been chock full of frustration. Our agency was ready to fill our home before we were even legally ready. And now that we’re licensed and ready, nothing. Well, there have been some things like telling us several times that Baby J was coming home to us. Then saying he wasn’t. And now there’s a new baby but our home and my days remain empty.

I realized my source of frustration this morning. As soon as we learned about Baby J, I prayed. I prayed, I begged, I pleaded and cried before the Lord. I sobbed his name out. I begged God to bring him to us. And then those prayers changed. I still sobbed his name, but I sobbed it as I prayed that God would preserve the home he was at, to keep Baby J from any more upheaval and trauma.

But with this new baby, I have been silent before the Lord.

My silence originates from fear. The more I prayed for Baby J, the more I fell in love with him. The more I loved him, the more I wanted him to stay where he was at. And learning that he would not be coming home to us hurt. It was expected, but it hurt.

And I simply don’t want to do that again with this new little one. I don’t want to fall in love with him. Not yet anyway. I don’t want to pray for his safety and wellbeing and salvation. I don’t want to let God open my heart and allow me to dream.

But then I think about how unfair it is to this new little one, depriving him of my love and my prayers. How I am neglecting my role as a mother in praying for her children. He may not be mine. He may never be mine, but he has been inserted into our lives and as a result I have a responsibility to lift him up. I have the blessing of bringing him before the Lord who wove him together in his mother’s womb. I have the obligation to go to battle for him since no one else can or will.

I’m terrified. I’m terrified of opening my heart again. I’m terrified of what it will feel like on the chance he never makes it into my arms. He’ll be another notch on the rope of babies I knew and loved but never got to hold.

And then I’m forced to realize that this is exactly what I signed up for. Foster care is loving kids who aren’t ours. Foster care is going to battle for children we may never get to call our own. Foster care is loving and letting go. Foster care is sacrifice and obligation and hard.

So I will continue on. I will pray for this little one. I will pray for his safety, well-being and health. I will pray for his terrified mamma. I will pray for his siblings. I will fall in love again. I will beg the Lord to heal and solve and renew. I will hurt. I will be sore.

But I will not give up. Because these babies, these kiddos, they need someone like me. They need people to beg on their behalf. They need someone to sob out their names. They need someone to love them, even in from afar, in a sacrificial and painful way. It is now my job to be that person for them. And I welcome the challenge.

For the Burds

For the Burds

As the saying goes, some things in life are “for the birds”— worthless, pointless, or inconsequential. Many of these things are important to me, so let's talk about them: infertility, chronic illness, Christianity, foster care, adoption, and thrifty homemaking.